Internalized transphobia

[Charlie Nicki]

I'll take your word for it, but it surprises me that it is different for you.  If this is too personal, please ignore or tell me so:

Do you think that is because there are simply more gay men around so that you are bound to run into one with matched interests, or is the sense of identification stronger in you the case of sexual orientation?

The first one. There is simply more gay men. I went to school with 15 gay boys... we weren't out but within time all of us came out. And then when I went to college I met more gay guys like me and then I started going to gay clubs, it was also the same. You have so many options to choose from that of course you will find a lot of people who share your interests.

I've met around 4 or 5 transgender females (half of them through my therapist) in my life and I do keep in touch with them but not a single one of them I can call my real friend yet.

Also, I think sexual orientation isn't as taboo as gender identity. People can easily talk about liking men or women but not about feeling like a different gender.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Complete]

Let's not over think this! Society's been putting crap in our heads since the day we were born. It's like dust filtering in, sometimes you have to clean it out. If I could have transitioned when I should have it would have been to be the wife of my best friend. Call it stealth or what ever, but that was the time when I just wanted to be a woman with all of my heart. It just didn't work out for me at that time. If I could have done what Lisa K and others did I wouldn't have advertised it either. In the 70's you just didn't do that if you wanted to live. Them comes the 80's and AIDs, sex with a pre-op MTF=GAY=Leper. This is the kind of things that lurk in the back our minds with those of us with some miles on us. We don't think about it anymore, but it's there, and it whispers at us in a blue moon. Beware of pointing fingers, some people have good reasons to hide.

I think there a lot of wisdom here, well worth some thought. Rather than look for more problems by creating things to worry about,  why not look for solutions?  A phobia is an irrational or unfounded fear, not a set of negative feelings or thoughts. Try thinking about the original question posed: do you suffer from internalized transport transphobia? In order to do that, you would have to be irrational by definition. If you are suffering from negative thoughts and feelings, then that is another matter altogether.
LisaK, l am glad you have recovered from you pub-phobia.

[rmaddy]

Also, I think sexual orientation isn't as taboo as gender identity. People can easily talk about liking men or women but not about feeling like a different gender.

Hopefully, that will improve with time.  Still, I think the addition level taboo that you identify is a manifestation of societal transphobia.

[Lisa_K]

...Nevertheless, the fact that she is transgender means that she understands something that almost no one else in my social circles does.  It's hard to put a value on that.

I think this thought is almost worthy of its own discussion? (and probably should be)

My guess is that this person has an experience of being trans that is roughly similar to your own and it is those commonalities that drive that level of understanding? I do recognize the value of this type of connection but it is one that has been elusive for me. It has only been within the last two years of my life that I realized finding this level of unspoken understanding is important and when I did unexpectedly find it, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Growing up, there was nobody like me. In high school, there was an obvious clique of swishy (sorry for the less than PC antiquated descriptor) boys but I was nothing like them in looks or manner and they wanted nothing to do with me. Yet because I had super long hair, pierced ears, shaved legs and was androgynously femme which wasn't a thing back then, everybody else thought I was gay and those that were gay thought I was way too queer or maybe it was I wasn't camp enough or something? I had no peers or confidantes other than the unconventionally funky but cool therapist that helped me keep things together through some of my more difficult times.

At any rate, once my folks and I had a name for what was going on with me after being officially diagnosed at 17, that was only further isolating because the only trans people anybody had heard about were Christine Jorgensen or maybe Jan Morris and they were nothing like me either. I was just a kid from Podunk with no sensational before and after that just somehow grew up and grew into being a girl. How strange was that? How weird was I? I know it felt like I was the only one.

I had never met or spoken to another real live trans person until I was 22 and checked into the hospital for SRS. They weren't like me either but I did make a friend and someone I communicated with for several years as pen pals. She was in her mid to late 50's but her struggles were so much different than mine. On a basic level, we had both been down the same road so there was some degree of that nebulous connectedness and on that level, I can have a good understanding of many here but there were/are things that just didn't fully click or resonate. After she suddenly passed away, I drifted fully into the cisnormative world, got married and never had anything to do with trans or LGB anything other than a lesbian couple I knew that have turned out to be lifelong friends that I consider my family. (I have no siblings, parents, relatives or children)

Then I had my awakening. With a chance online encounter nearly two years ago in somewhere completely unexpected, I finally did meet "someone like me" and it made me realize that connection/understanding was something I didn't know I had been missing. So many things in our childhood experiences and memories mirrored one another. She had grown up like I did dealing with parents and schools and doctors and crap. Knowing her brought many things long repressed or unacknowledged to the surface and I began to examine some of this trans stuff in my own life from many years in my past because I had never really talked with someone that did understand on that higher level. It changed the way I feel about myself and helped me get over some of my own hangups about being trans i.e. internalized transphobia because I had always felt so all alone in all of this and no longer was. I would have never joined a forum like this if she hadn't brought me out of my shell, so to speak.

Like me she is, but not. I am exactly 40 years older. She socially transitioned before high school. In spite of my outward persona and presentation, I had to wait until I graduated but still, that special connectedness was there because of our strong commonalities. I've given up hope of finding someone my own age with a path and history like mine because I'm convinced that few exist. Since joining this forum not too many months ago, I've met exactly two people I feel that type of connection with and they are 19 and 20 and really just kids but they were kids like I was that are going to grow up and have a life like I've had and that makes a difference even though I could be a grandmother to both of them.

So to wrap up this off topic 2:00 AM ramble that I wrote without even drinking (!), while the value having a trans friend that really does understand and instinctively gets it may be kind of hard to measure, for me anyway, I would have to weight that as pretty significant. It's better than living in a vacuum and I think it's pretty basic human nature to seek out others that are like ourselves.

Apologies for the wall of text and side track. I just felt like writing and sharing some of the perspectives of an all grown up and grown old trans youth because they seem to be so rarely heard. Over the course of my lifetime the whole trans thing was kind of a blip but like the hidden roots of a tree silently holding things up, a blip that still manages to have its influences. I've learned to be okay with that, mostly.

LisaK, l am glad you have recovered from you pub-phobia.

Pub-phobia? Me? As one of the world's most interesting women, I don't always drink beer but when I do... I get all philosophical and foam at the keyboard. 

Can't really say what my excuse is for this post though? 

[SadieBlake]

Lisa, beautifully put, thanks. My local bff is a trans woman also, came out as young as you did but as you say, 40 years later.

This isn't guaranteed, but it's safe to say she simply gets stuff. Like when I decided to start hrt a couple of years ago I confided in exactly two people besides of course pshrink and healthcare providers. One was a close cis friend J who I knew would be accepting and keep my confidences. The other was my bff H.

The difference was even though J knew me better and is one of the least judgemental people I know he reacted strongly to my not telling my GF ahead of time. H, on the other hand understood right off that I needed space to figure out my own response to being on estrogen without the michegas that I knew would accompany the eventual conversation with my GF.

Then again with H, I'm careful to not assume we're on the same page. We often aren't and we have very different experiences and triggers.

Conversely my pshrink had no particular experience with trans people before working with me and so I feel I've had to educate her some along the way. Yet when we needed to contact another therapist for my 2nd required evaluation letter for GCS we of course contacted a woman who specialized in trans issues.

Well love and behold, pshrink #2 while fundamentally more clueful more or less treated me like a number, misgenders me after having insisted that I choose preferred pronouns (at that time I was still very much on the fence about where I'd land). She even sent me a draft of the eventual surgery letter that still had someone else's name in it, so clearly a copy/paste job and yet billed me for an hour of her time for doing that :-(.

Now pshrink 2 was clearly not the least transphobic, however it felt to me she was forcing her responses and interactions with me. As someone who clearly isn't passing for male, I fully expect some gender dissonance in my every day reality. And yet my GF (who initially very much resisted medical transition), my pshrink and a bunch of younger friends who simply grew up not making so many assumptions as most older people do are all simply comfortable around who I am.

[Complete]

I think LisaK has been very fortunate to have found someone with whom she can relate, who shares some experience similar to hers. I have yet to find someone like that. Even  LisaK and l, despite having made our change at roughly the same time and age, are world's apart in our experiences. Unlike  LisaK,  l was not overly girly nor did l have the benefit of an early diagnosis by someone that had even the remotest idea of what was going on.
Nevertheless l knew l would grow up to be who l am. In my case, l would have to admit that it was quite simplistic miracle that things worked out as well as they did. Somehow what needed to happen, happened. The people that l needed to help me were found. I can only attribute this to the grace of God.
Honestly, l have no bitterness or regret. Sure, it would have been easier if l had been born without this rather inconvenient and significant mismatch,  but then things are as they are and l have no complaints.
I often wonder what a conversation in person would be like with LisaK. I imagine it would quickly move away from our distant past to more contemporary things like the sorry state of our world in general,  or maybe on how we could actually make things better.

[Lisa_K]

I think LisaK has been very fortunate to have found someone with whom she can relate, who shares some experience similar to hers.

After sixty years of life, this is something I never felt would happen, wasn't anything planned and was not something I was really looking for. That's why it took me so much by surprise and had such an impact. How it all kind of transcended our generational differences and what one would think would be a mentor type relationship because I am so much older and more experienced is still something I don't fully understand. I learned much more from her than she did from me.

I have yet to find someone like that.

Complete, I maybe more than anyone knows how this feels. Even though I feel pretty closely bonded with this friend of mine through our childhood similarities, there are still a few vast differences that make this less than the perfect one-to-one pairing but it is as close as I've ever come. She was among the first crop of kids in this country to go on puberty blockers and transitioned before high school. She did not have to face unwanted physical changes, the brutal and in my case violent schoolyard bullying and social ostracization, nor did she have to figure out and fund the SRS she had at 17. We do have a lot of differences when it comes right down to it but like in horseshoes and hand grenades, close enough has been good enough.

Even  LisaK and l, despite having made our change at roughly the same time and age, are world's apart in our experiences. Unlike  LisaK,  l was not overly girly nor did l have the benefit of an early diagnosis by someone that had even the remotest idea of what was going on.

Don't discount the things we do have in common. We're still some of the most experienced old-timers around these parts and just because of the way things were and the things we went through in the 70's, I do see you as somewhat of a kindred spirit that knows what things were like back in the dark ages. That counts for something. I'm sure there are at least some stories we could swap that we couldn't with others that didn't live through these times even though you were a few years ahead of me.

While true I had been very obviously different from the beginning, never had any sort of a normal boyhood and was socially very different as a child and teen, we still managed to get things taken care of early in life when such things were barely possible or on the fringe. As far as professionals without a clue, my folks first took me for help in 1965 when I was ten years old which turned out to be an on-going thing especially when I hit junior high. It wasn't until seven years later and countless hours of talking to head doctors and being poked and prodded that I did see someone that had a clue that diagnosed me as transsexual at 17. Early? Maybe by the standards of the day but it didn't seem like it after the years of crap I had already been through. I was the youngest person this team had ever dealt with which only put me under further scrutiny. I got hormones and what I wanted and they did help my folks with their concerns but I was still an anomaly at the time because kids just didn't do this sort of thing or have these sort of problems.

Nevertheless l knew l would grow up to be who l am. In my case, l would have to admit that it was quite simplistic miracle that things worked out as well as they did. Somehow what needed to happen, happened. The people that l needed to help me were found. I can only attribute this to the grace of God.

Miracles, yes for me too but perhaps without the religious underpinnings. That and a lot of happenstance and things that just fell against the odds randomly in my favor. I owe so much to the compassion of my parents that I'm still not convinced weren't aliens or travelers from the future because they were so much ahead of the times and put up with a lot of crap because of me. This had to be pure luck or karma or something but they kept me alive and got me through the worst of it.

Honestly, l have no bitterness or regret. Sure, it would have been easier if l had been born without this rather inconvenient and significant mismatch,  but then things are as they are and l have no complaints.

I tend to kvetch from time to time in introspective moments as my post pub adventure indicates but like you said, things are what they are but it's up to the individual to perceive them as positives or negatives. I've chosen to be happy, have a good life and not sweat the small stuff. I do have a few minor niggles, who doesn't but in the big picture, I have no real complaints either (except maybe to be thinner and wealthy!). 

I often wonder what a conversation in person would be like with LisaK. I imagine it would quickly move away from our distant past to more contemporary things like the sorry state of our world in general,  or maybe on how we could actually make things better.

I think that would probably be interesting for the both of us although I'm sure we'd probably spend some time discussing the current state of trans world and how different that is before addressing the world in general. I'll PM you my email and maybe we can start there if you'd like?

[Complete]

That would be great. Sounds like fun.☺